Wednesday, 21 August 2013

Being an Individual in the Organism of Community

Being an Individual in the Organism of Community

Claire - Wednesday, August 21, 2013

In this day and age we are all about
the individual. Having your own style, teaching your kids to be independent,
having your own space, your own money, your own car, making your own decisions,
eating what ever you want, making up your own mind on how you want to live and
how the world should be shaped. These are all really great concepts, no
one wants to be a sheep or to have their kids grow up as sheep. Critical
thinking and not following the mainstream rhetoric are the ways to have a
brilliant and inspired life. Some of the most celebrated people have created
their own rules to achieve the successes they strived for. The question is, at
what point does being an individual become not only no longer self serving, but
destructive to the detriment of yourself and your community? This is
particularly pertinent when it comes to health. Do you owe it to your friends,
family and community to be as healthy as you can?

Our point of reference to this
question is more often that not born out of discussions on the obesity
epidemic. I think the main reason for this is the idea that being obese is a
choice and any other diseases from psychological disorders, heart disease and
cancer to the common cold are random, uncontrollable and therefore unavoidable
if they happen to effect you. So we get this skewing of our attitudes that if
you are fat, you are a drain on society and therefore you should stop being
selfish and get healthy.

This is where those in the "Fat Acceptance"
camp come back with the point that there is just as many sick people who are
skinny or average weight. The argument becomes very emotive because only a
certain group of people get scrutinised under this ideal. The truth is
you can't instantly asses the health of a stranger by observing them in the
street.

So as an individual do you have the
right to eat and drink what ever you want? Do you have the right to sit in
front of the TV for 12 hours of the day leaving only to refill you plate and
visit the bathroom?

Yes! There is no other answer to this but yes!
The right to bodily autonomy is completely and utterly INDISPUTABLE in my
book. What you choose to do with your body and with whom should always be
your choice. Be it what sort of food you eat, who you have sex with or how much
exercise you want to do. Your body is yours and yours alone. You also
have the right to feel good about yourself. If what you are doing makes you
genuinely feel good, no one has the over riding authority to tell you to stop
(unless you are doing something that is trampling their rights to bodily
autonomy or feeling good about them selves). Your body, your feelings,
your rights, your choices. Telling someone that they are selfish for exercising
these rights is not only completely out of line, but also counter productive. This
type of external motivation, particularly in the form of shaming, is extremely
limiting in its successes. You set someone up for failure by trying to shame
them out of bad health. This aspect of epigenetics is something we talk
extensively about at Tribal Spice. The fat acceptance camp have this right and
the skinny-sick need to recognise their privilege of not having their lifestyle
scrutinised, judged and spat back at them with vitriol.

Having said all that, we don't live in a
vacuum. Everything you do have an effect on other people, particularly family
and friends but also the greater community. I like to look at this as momentum.
Some of what we do has positive momentum for ourselves and community meaning it
builds towards a better future and other stuff has negative momentum, it steals
from our future and possibly from those around us or even from future
generations.

For an example, let's look at the imaginary person who
spends 12 hrs a day watching TV. This is obviously well within their
rights, but which direction is the momentum going. This person is not moving
much, so no matter how fat, skinny or otherwise this person is this will effect
their health. Movement is required for moving lymph fluid which is vital in
eliminating waste from the body. It is also required for moving cerebrospinal
fluid, which is how the brain is nourished. It is also required for health
joints. So just for this person the lack of movement is causing toxicity and
malnourishment (regardless of what they eat).

The next aspect is they are
watching TV, which requires quite a bit of electricity. This can not come
about with out some sort of mining, even solar panels and wind turbines are
made from mined materials which require shipping, manufacturing etc. This
effects the environment and depletes resources that may be required for future
generations. 12 hrs of TV watching over a number of years equals massive
negative momentum for the environment.

The next point is TV is not real, you
can not build relationships with TV characters. You spend time feeling
some of the emotions involved with a real relationship, but when it is all over
your brain actually registers the loss as grief. In this way TV creates high
levels of cortisol which leads to poor health and lowered self esteem.

Everything
about this choice is creating negative momentum and we haven't even mentioned
the idea that those 12 hours could be spent doing something that contributes to
society. When you make choices that have a serious magnitude of negative
momentum it not only effects you, it has a massive impact on society as a
whole. You are also often creating habits and patterns of behaviour that your
children will follow.

Another aspect of making choices
based purely around your individual wants is that it inevitably becomes a form
of self alienation. We are social animals, in the days of our evolution without
our tribe we could not survive. Our genome was shaped to foster community and
family and it has only been in the past few generations that this circle of
family has receded down to just us or at a stretch the nuclear family. The more
you focus on you and your rights, the smaller your circle of consideration
becomes until you become so myopic all you can see is you. Even if others
around you are bending over backwards to try to help, you feel unsupported and
unloved.

Finding the balance between
individual needs and those of the tribe is like walking along a narrow ridge
with a thousand metre drop off on either side. Having our basic human rights
trampled on is not ok in anyway, but exercising those rights to the detriment
of ourselves and others is equally toxic.

Be an individual, make your choices
the last thing we need is a bunch sheeple populating the earth. But look for
and be open to the inspiration of becoming more, of growing of creating
positive momentum towards health and vitality. For you and your tribe.